SHANE COOPER STAYS INSANE

An Unconventional New Zealand Artist Creates Provocative Museum Pieces When He's Not Engineering Software

by Andy, special guest writer

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Shane Cooper’s day job keeps him sane. His artwork, according to him, keeps him insane, and for that, he is very grateful.

As a software engineer, his work “satisfies some weird, autistic urge inside me,” says Cooper. “It’s not that my work is boring, it is in fact highly challenging and I am constantly learning new things, but I need an outlet for the bizarre thoughts and images that are constantly flowing through my brain.”

For Cooper, 38, he has found his outlet through his art, and has made quite an impression on the art community with his oddball, yet complex pieces.

Residing in Wellington, New Zealand, Cooper says he is “more often mistaken for a Turkish tourist than as a displaced American.”

He is a large man; perpetually clad in head-to-toe black clothing. His jet-black hair is slicked back with so much gel it almost appears unnatural. On his face rests a pair of thick-framed glasses, and a single gold earring adorns his left ear.

Cooper’s most recent piece, titled Feed: A Garden Raised by Television, has been featured in museums in seventeen countries throughout Europe, Australia, and Canada. Currently residing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Feed has become a “crowd favorite” according to Cooper.

Photo: copyright 2006 Simon Jung

The title describes the piece perfectly as it is, in essence, a garden raised by television.

“Suspended by airline cables, the piece is composed of two halves – the upper half is a video wall of TV screens all tuned to a different channel,” says Steve Wexel, 45, a colleague of Cooper and the production assistant for Feed. “The lower half consists of a garden of ferns that can survive under extreme light. The screens provide light for the plants, which grow towards the screen, eventually colliding.”

Cooper feels a strong connection to his art and attempts to “include a part of myself and my life at the time in each piece, regardless of how large or small,” he says.

“Feed has a strong metaphysical meaning to me. There is something said about individuals raised in streams of information they have no control over – the danger of contentment – the way perhaps humanity is incubated by a higher force, and may even be ‘gardened’ by it,” says Cooper.

Growing up in Yorba Linda, Calif. Cooper was the oldest son in a family of four. He was an avid writer and musician by the age of 14, proficient in several instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, banjo, and piano.

“Shane [Cooper] spent almost every night in his room with his guitar when we first got it for him,” recalls father Allen Cooper, 63. “I would listen to him play, noticing that he would play the same parts of songs over and over. It was like he was trying to make every note perfect, every tone exact. It was at this point that I knew I had a very special, very gifted son, and he was going to do something great with his life.”

Perhaps as a prerequisite for his later life, many unorthodox activities paved the way for Cooper’s life of bizarre artistic creativity.

“I remember one particular night waking up and seeing Shane dressed head-to-toe in black clothes, wearing a military issue helmet, and attempting to sneak out the back door of our house,” recalls sister Andrea Reekstin, 34. “He quietly whispered that he and his friend were planning to break into an abandoned missile base, simply to see what was there, and maybe take some pictures of it and bring back some scraps.”

Photo: copyright Kimberly Walton

Most siblings might find this behavior odd, even dangerous, but not Reekstin.

“This was normal for him. There was nothing he ever did that I didn’t expect. Of course it was odd, but for Shane it was just what he did.”

Cooper left Yorba Linda at the age of 18 for the beachfront city of San Diego, to study at the University of California at San Diego.

“Since leaving, I look at Southern California now with a critical eye, a distant eye, which makes it interesting to study first hand, briefly - the mini-mall cancer, massive destruction of land, the assumption that there will forever exist a luxurious input of resources flowing into it, and the bad taste that flourishes amid all the luxury. These things are interesting to me and I can't deny my perverse interest in observing it,” says Cooper.

During his stay at UCSD, he pursued a degree in computer engineering, though was not ‘following his heart’ with his choice of major.

“I took computer engineering because it was an engineering degree and I wanted to challenge myself. I forced myself through it, and hated it, and in fact almost did not pass in the end,” Cooper says of his educational choices. “Engineering sucks, in my opinion. I did it because I thought I had to, for a variety of absolutely invalid reasons. I did not follow my heart.”

These days in Wellington, when not working on his art, Cooper spends his days writing base software for Weta Digital, a major name in the movie industry. His programs have been used to animate computer-generated characters used in blockbuster films like The Lord of the Rings trilogies, King Kong, and many other smaller, independent releases.

Cooper took a job with Weta after a short stint as an installation artist specializing in computer generated art at the German museum ZKM.

“I was quite tired of living in Germany. The weather, the fast-pace of life, it just wasn’t for me. I really never saw myself working in the movie industry, but I was bored and in desperate need of money. I took the job at Weta because it was a drastic change for me – away from the big city life – plus it was near the ocean.”

Cooper has become quite fond of Wellington during his five-year stay. He lives by himself in a house on the beach with no one around him for miles to disrupt his lifestyle. He only ventures into town when he feels the need to be social, or for the occasional restaurant meal.

“It’s the coolest city in the world I think. The rest of New Zealand I’m not so sure about, but Wellington is quite spectacular,” says Cooper. “There is amazing music here, good food, clean air, fun nightlife. People are interesting here. They are at first familiar, and then foreign, then they become familiar in the new way as you learn them.”

On Cooper’s website, shanecooper.com, one can see a picture of the man kneeling down, lips pursed together, attempting to kiss a computer generated M&M. This single photo says so much of Cooper. The imaginary virtual world he spends so much time in brings about so many questions regarding a world that to him “can seem so fake.”

“Life is a vexing issue. I’m currently questioning who I am, where I’m going, why I never grow up,” says Cooper. “Many of my conflicts are becoming more metaphysical, centering around the nature of my own consciousness. For me, these are the big puzzles, and the really, the only ones worth wondering about.”

As Cooper continues on his quest for the true nature of his existence, he spends most of his time working on his latest piece, titled Parasite.

“Parasite is a wall-projected image that appears to display the person standing before it. In actuality, it is an image of a previous visitor, possibly from months before, standing in the same manner and position as the current observer. At each instant, as the observer moves and changes position, their 'reflected' image moves with them, rapidly changing into the different people who have been there before, matching the way the current observer is currently standing. Initially, it starts out empty, but over a long time many thousands of observers are recorded. The piece acquires a life of it's own - increasing in its ability to mimic and follow observers in the present, using images of previous observers from the past. The piece depends entirely on the act of observation to construct itself and it's interaction,” according to the artwork description on Cooper’s website.

This latest work was inspired “by a very interesting experience I had on a beach near my home,” says Cooper.

“My mind was stressed in a way that opened doors and allowed more flexibility. There was a moment when I was being followed by friends, I stopped seeing while I was walking, and the best way I can describe things is that I was processing my vision in metaphor. I was without seeing; blind, but seeing in alternate ways. For the first time I understood how much of an impression people have on my life. I decided to create Parasite for each and every person I have ever come in contact with, and demonstrate to them just how much of an impact they have had on me.”